DAPA staff rotation program is taking off in Africa and Asia

In 2014 CIAT started a global staff exchange program to assure appropriate exchange of research areas and regions, which is key for CIAT global research agenda. DAPA is in addition implementing its own staff rotation program for candidates that have not been selected through the CIAT staff exchange program.

Photocredit: Theresa Liebig, CIAT

Theresa Liebig will stay in Uganda between February 2014 to May 2015 for data collection of coffee pests and diseases in Mount Elgon region for the study “Trade-offs and synergies between climate change adaptation and mitigation in coffee production in East Africa. Her study concentrates on the abundance of important pests and diseases of the region, i.e. Coffee Leaf Rust, Coffee Berry Borer and Coffee stem borer among others in different coffee production systems and environments with special reference on the ecological mechanisms of shading. Furthermore, spatial analysis will be conducted for site specific crop health management in the face of climate change.

Photocredit: John Bernal

Beatriz Rodriguez will stay in Uganda during 2 months (April /May) and 3 months in Nairobi (June, July, August). In Uganda she will be supporting the project “Trade-offs and synergies in climate change adaptation and mitigation in coffee systems”. And in Nairobi she will be analyzing the impact of CC on different crops, through the crop modeling software “Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer” (DSSAT), for different countries in East Africa within the new CCAFS flagship project.

Photocredit: John Bernal

Eric Rahn will be in Uganda during 2 months (April 3rd to June 10th) in 2014 doing field work for the BMZ project “Trade-offs and synergies between climate change adaptation and mitigation in coffee production in East Africa. His research focuses on spatial modeling of climate change adaptation strategies in coffee production on a landscape and regional scale and evaluating the related environmental impacts (carbon stock change, water provision, erosion). He will spend additional time in East Africa (Uganda/Tanzania) during 2015 and 2016.

Photocredit: John Bernal

Anton Eitzinger already finished his 1 month stay in the CIAT Hanoi office in March. He was working on analysis with local DAPA staff on an ongoing CCAFS project to provide an overview of climate variability and likely climate change impacts on agriculture across the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) in South East Asia. Further, capacity building workshops were held in Vietnam and PDR Laos to present and discuss methodologies of crop- and landuse-change modeling with participants from national institutions.